Green Day: Bullet In A Bible

Every purchase you make through these Amazon links supports DVD Verdict's reviewing efforts. Thank you!

All Rise...

Wake Judge Adam Arseneau up when September ends.

The Charge

"Music to me is the air that I breathe. It's the blood that pumps
through my veins that keeps me alive. —-Billie Joe Armstrong (Green
Day)

The Case

Admittedly a little more "compact disc"-y a product than we
normally review 'round these parts, Green Day: Bullet in a Bible does, in
fact, come with a DVD, which more than qualifies it for inclusion. One part live
concert CD, one part DVD, Bullet in a Bible captures the high-energy band
at the height of its 2005 World Tour and, boy howdy, if you have ever questioned
this band's continued relevance in popular culture, check out the absolutely
silly amount of people crammed into The National Bowl in Milton Keynes to see
them play.

In what could very well be the largest punk rock show ever (and I mean
ever), more than 130,000 people elbowed and crammed into each other to see Green
Day play over the span of two days in the midsized English town (a crowd of
almost the population of the town itself was in attendance). As the camera pans
over the opening few seconds of the concert, Billie Joe conducts the opening
stabs of the theme from 2001: A Space
Odyssey with his upraised arms, a seemingly self-indulgent bit of arrogance
until the camera reveals exactly how many people are in attendance. Bullet in
a Bible is an incredible DVD if only to bear witness to the gargantuan
magnitude of a modern-day Green Day concert. Trust me: you cannot believe it
until you see it.

The material featured on this live concert DVD/CD is heavily slanted towards
Green Day's new material from its freakishly popular album, American
Idiot, which never did much for me personally, but seems to be doing for a
new generation of punk kids what Dookie did for my generation 10 years
ago. You got to hand it to Green Day…more than 15 years of drunken antics,
practical jokes, power chords, and punk rock, and they manage to re-invent
themselves again and again…with the same material. Geniuses, they are.

Having enjoyed Green Day for more than a decade, I freely and readily admit
that their multi-platinum, Grammy award-winning album, American Idiot,
lost my interest like a kid loses his parents at an amusement park; this is to
say, almost immediately. Bullet in a Bible therefore becomes slightly
more difficult to digest for this reviewer, given the preferential track
treatment to the band's new radio-friendly material, but such is the way of
things. After all, in 15 years of increasing record sales and notoriety, Green
Day has managed to turn themselves into a real, honest-to-goodness band, full of
keyboard players, horns, and additional behind-the-scenes guitar players, which
is a far cry from their angst-ridden three-piece roots.

This kind of metamorphosis was probably inevitable. As the band progressed
in musical development, dropping the "punk" moniker to describe their
music, so changed the complexity of their songs and increasing production
values. Watching Bullet in a Bible, one cannot help realizing that Green
Day is so far beyond its humble roots playing tiny clubs in Oakland, California,
as to be laughable. The sheer spectacle of its concerts is like some bizarre
parody of the band they once were. They still play the same three chord songs
just like back in the Lookout! Records day, but on such a grandiose theatrical
scale as to be absurd.

Case in point, the stage setup is quite fantastic: large, elaborate, and
full of fireworks, exactly like a good rock concert should be. Add to this the
elaborate costumed antics of the band members (and their fantastic taste in
silly hats) and the performance is extremely entertaining…it looks and
sounds fantastic. The transfer is quite respectable, with decent black levels,
and good color representation and detail, though may be edited too kinetically
in that MTV style for some viewers to enjoy. The camera (like the band) rarely
sits still, jumping between lighting flares, various film stocks, and
alternating angles, interjected with some backstage antics (usually naked), the
result of which is more a music video than a live concert, but damn entertaining
nonetheless. From start to finish, the DVD simply rocks. Watching a hundred
thousand teenage kids screaming out the lyrics to "Longview," which
debuted on the charts the same year most of these kids were born, is, to say the
least, a surreal experience. It staggers the mind.

Both a stereo and a Dolby Digital 5.1 track are available, and I found
myself preferring the straight stereo track. Though quieter, the audio seems
more accurately represented, mixed and balanced the way a good concert should
be: good bass response, clear vocals, etc. Throw on the surround channel, and
the treble increases noticeably and the guitar drowns out every other instrument
in a tidal wave of noise. The surround track is serviceable, but I wouldn't use
it given how good the stereo track sounds.

The only true downside to Bullet in a Bible (for me, personally) is
the song selections…far too much American Idiot and mamsy-pamsy
material, and not nearly enough of the aggressive and angsty songs that put the
band on the map. How such a high-energy juvenile band can encore out with
"Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" and still sleep soundly at night,
I cannot fathom. Fans of the new album will certainly be all over this DVD like
gangbusters, but for us crotchety old folk who remember fondly the less
glamorous Green Day days, Bullet In A Bible feels…I don't know,
weird and threatening.

Like teenagers on my lawn. These whippersnappers today think they own the
place with their rockin' rock music. Pshaw. Harrumph.